Shortened note in preference to ibid. Chicago style.

I apologise in advance because I've already asked a variant of this question before, but pertaining specifically to a per page basis.

My university department uses Chicago 15th and does allow the use of ibid but prefers a shortened form of the note where each note is not _exactly_ the same. So for instance "Ibid, 21." would be discouraged because the page is not the same so a shortened version of the note should be used.

Is there anyway to make it so Ibid is only used when the preceding note is exactly the same and a shortened note is used otherwise? Some sort of toggle between the different forms in the citation editor would be good.

Thanks.
  • I think that should be possible, yes.
    I don't have a lot of time right now, so unless you feel a little comfortable with csl this won't make sense, but the way to go would be through

    which tests for the presence of a locator - such as the page number after ibid.
  • There appears to be some of your reply missing, I can't make sense of your last sentence without it.

    I'm not very competent with the csl language, I haven't tried editing it before.

    Thanks for your help.
  • Adamsmith had written:
    I think that should be possible, yes.
    I don't have a lot of time right now, so unless you feel a little comfortable with csl this won't make sense, but the way to go would be through
    <if variable="locator" >
    which tests for the presence of a locator - such as the page number after ibid.
    but the if tag is being parsed as HTML so you couldn't see it.
  • oops sorry, written before coffee.
  • Ah okay, thank you both. I'll give it a try when I have a bit more time.
  • edited February 17, 2010
    I think that what you want for this in (current) CSL 0.8 is a set of tests like this, in the citation layout section:<choose>
    <if position="first">
    ...... CSL for full form
    </if>
    <else-if position="ibid-with-locator">
    ....... CSL for "subsequent" form
    </else-if>
    <else-if position="ibid">
    ....... CSL for ibid
    </else-if>
    <else>
    ....... CSL for "subsequent" form (again)
    </else>
    </choose>
    Because the subsequent form is used twice in the layout, you would probably want to set it up as a macro.

    This will account for the fact that a cite to the same page as the preceding cite should be treated as identical, and be rendered as "ibid".

    (Side note for CSL development: This is would be easier to accomplish if the piority ordering of the position values were altered in CSL. The ranking is currently "ibid-with-locator" implies "ibid", which implies "subsequent", which implies "first". If the positions of "ibid" and "ibid-with-locator" were switched, to put the most-nearly-identical test (ibid) at the end of the chain, the conditional above could be simplified a bit.)

    (EDIT: Switched order of conditions; I had misread the CSL specification. On reflection, I think that changing the priority order of these conditions inside the processor is probably not a good idea. Too much chance of unintended side effects.)
  • right I forgot - there is an ibid with locator you can test for - that should make this even easier, I think.
  • I'm not savvy with CSL but would like to know if there are any styles identical to Chicago that don't use ibid or some way to disable ibid all together.

    I'm a graduate student in history and several professors have commented that I shouldn't be using ibid at all but just a "Last Name, Book/Article, Page Number" shortened form for any repeat uses of the same document. Thanks!
  • wbeers, that's an easy one -- use this https://www.zotero.org/svn/csl/chicago-note-no-ibid.csl
  • edited April 20, 2010
    Thanks Dead1nside -- based on your recommendation, I selected "install" from this page http://www.zotero.org/styles and it worked great!
  • Thanks Dan
  • What about Chicago Full Note with bibliography and without "ibid"? Is there a ready to use style? If not - can I modify it myself?
  • edited April 30, 2010
    there isn't at the moment.
    It's pretty easy to do, though -
    From the full note style, remove this:
    <if position="ibid-with-locator">
    <group delimiter=", ">
    <text term="ibid" text-case="capitalize-first" suffix="."/>
    <text macro="point-locators-subsequent"/>
    </group>
    </if>
    <else-if position="ibid">
    <text term="ibid" text-case="capitalize-first" suffix="."/>
    </else-if>

    and change the following
    <else-if> and the </else-if> about five lines below to
    <if> and </if> respectively.

    See here for general instructions on changing styles:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/csl_simple_edits
  • edited April 30, 2010
    OK, I found it. Thanks.
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